


Non Sum Qualis Eram (Known Some Call Is Air Am)

by lookninjas



Category: House of Leaves - Mark Z. Danielewski, Torchwood
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2010-02-13
Updated: 2010-02-13
Packaged: 2021-03-17 10:01:19
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 2
Words: 11,829
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28598115
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/lookninjas/pseuds/lookninjas
Summary: When a ghost hunter vanishes in the haunted house that he was examining, the Torchwood team is called in to investigate. Once inside, they discover a mysterious hallway, a spiral staircase, and a strange series of connections to a childhood that Ianto can't remember.
Comments: 1
Kudos: 3





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> This was written a very long time ago for the Help_Haiti auctions on livejournal, for lj-user ladykorana. It does connect, in a way, to another of my fics (Motherless Boys), but you don't have to read that story for this to make sense. You don't even have had to read House of Leaves, although I do still really love the book. 
> 
> This is the plain text version. There is a version with colored text and more elaborate formatting on my dreamwidth: Part One is [here](https://lookninjas.dreamwidth.org/3947.html#cutid1) and Part Two is [here. ](https://lookninjas.dreamwidth.org/4198.html#cutid1)

Tosh sank back into her chair, and pressed her palms into her eyes, trying to rub away the exhaustion. When she looked again, there was a mug of coffee sitting by her mousepad, handle turned towards her, inviting. She reached for it; the ceramic was warm in her hands, and the first sip was brilliant as always, just enough cream, just enough sugar. "Any luck?" Ianto asked, resting one hip against the edge of the workstation.

She shook her head, mug still cradled in both hands. "There's almost... a sort of flutter in the readings, like it's picking up on something just out of range, background radiation or... But no spikes, nothing I can really pin down." She shook her head again, took another sip of the coffee. "You?"

Ianto shrugged, setting his own coffee down on Tosh's workstation. He had a small steno pad in his free hand; no files, nothing that spoke of any large discovery. "Everything I found on Will Navidson matches what Jack got from his contacts at UK-Paranormal." He flipped the pad open. "Famous photojournalist, won a Pulitzer in 1994 for a picture taken in Sudan during the famine... lived in New York, never married, had two children with his long-term girlfriend Karen Green... Three years ago, he left it all behind to become a ghost hunter in Cardiff. No one's sure why." Ianto glanced up from his notes. "The name sounded familiar, though, so I had a look through my diary. He called me, Tosh. On the fourteenth. He wanted to talk about the house in Cyncoed, the one he was investigating when he disappeared. I kept meaning to call him back, but..."

He looked so guilty, then, and Tosh wished for something to say. The best she could muster up was a commiserating shrug, and a "Well, the Rift's been so active..."

Ianto nodded. "Not that I could have told him much of anything, really. The paper archives are organized by subject; failing that, by date. I tried searching for the house's address in the database, but those files don't go back much more than a decade, so..."

Tosh grimaced. She and Ianto had been working to get everything entered into the Mainframe, but there were always new cases to work on, new projects to tackle, and there simply weren't enough hours in the day for everything to get done. At a loss, she turned back to her computer. "It's weird, though," she said, after a moment. "We know that when the Rift takes something, or someone, there's a spike. Not a big one, not always, but it's visible. I've gone through everything for the past month, and it's just..."

"Fluttering." Ianto sat his coffee down at the edge of the workstation, leaning in to examine the screen along with her. "It's steady, though. Consistent." His finger traced the slightly jagged line across the bottom of the screen. "This is the last week?"

"Two weeks." Tosh tapped one of the spikes. "That's the box of rubbish that we found in Penarth. There's the Hoix, and that one's the vine monster -- you know, with the tendrils, and the --"

Ianto wrinkled his nose. "I remember." He shifted so that he was crouching by Tosh's chair; she budged over to give him room. "So the vine monster was on Sunday, which was the... seventeenth?" He glanced at Tosh, and she nodded. "Navidson went in to investigate the house on the fifteenth. Either he was taken on the seventeenth, and we're just not seeing it because there's a larger spike in the way, or he was taken afterwards, and it's not showing up."

Tosh frowned at him. "It could have happened between the fifteenth and the seventeenth," she pointed out.

"It's the twenty-first today. I'm sure Jack's friends at UK-Paranormal are used to odd comings and goings, but I imagine they wouldn't give it a week before deciding that one of their own had been snatched up." Ianto reached across Tosh's lap, groping for her mouse; she settled back and let him take over, closing in on the readings for the past four days. "This one," he said, tapping the screen. Tosh put her glasses on and leaned in. She thought the spike he was indicating might be slightly larger than the ones immediately preceding and following it. _Might_ be. She checked the dates on it.

"The nineteenth," she said, glancing at Ianto. "Forty-eight hours to declare a missing person. Still, though, you'd think there'd be more than just this."

Ianto settled back on his haunches, resting one hand on Tosh's armrest for support. "The monitors are designed to pick up Rift energy," he reasoned. "But if there's something else, some other large energy source, it might be throwing the readings off a bit. Just enough to cause that wobble."

It made sense, and yet it didn't, quite. "It'd have to be pretty large to throw off the Rift Monitor, though," Tosh pointed out.

"Wouldn't be the first time." Ianto's face was placid. "That meteor, the one that landed up near Abergavenny. Threw off the monitors for a week before we managed to dispose of it."

Tosh felt her eyebrow raising despite herself. "You think there's a meteor. In Cyncoed."

Ianto just shrugged. "Doesn't have to be a meteor. Could be anything, really. Could be the house itself." Just for a moment, Tosh thought she saw a shadow pass over his face, but it was gone almost as soon as she'd noticed it. He pushed himself to his feet. "Just, you know, it's not _always_ the Rift."

"No," Tosh agreed, turning back to her computer. "Sometimes it's cannibals." Ianto laughed at that, and Tosh smiled to herself. It faded as Ianto turned to walk away. "Ianto?" He glanced back at her, his expression inquiring. "Suppose it isn't anything? Maybe Navidson just decided... maybe he just didn't want to be a ghost hunter any longer. He's done it before."

"He has." Ianto frowned, then shrugged again, his face clearing. "But then again, maybe it _is_ something. Can't hurt to at least look into it, try to figure it out." And with that, Ianto walked away, back towards the dark tunnels of the Archives.

Tosh settled back into her chair, studying her screens. Ianto's spike was maybe a little bigger than the others around it. _Maybe_. It certainly wasn't anything she'd want to take to Jack. But then, Jack had been the one to dump this case in their laps in the first place. And really, even if the flutter wasn't related to Navidson exactly, it could still wind up being important.

With a sigh, she flagged the relevant spikes, including Ianto's, and then printed it all off to show the others.

*

"Well, the neighbors weren't much good," Gwen said, flipping through her notebook. "It was the same things they told Navidson: cats have gone missing, families move in but don't stay there long, creepy feeling... There was one thing, though. Some of the older folks remembered a family living there, back in the eighties. They had a little boy, maybe three or four. One day, he went missing. The police were called in, the whole neighborhood went out looking for him. No one could find him. Two days later, they found him curled up on the lawn, crying. He wouldn't say what had happened. Said he couldn't remember."

Ianto shrugged. "He probably just wandered off, got too scared to come back home. Or got lost, if he didn't go out very much."

"It's possible," Gwen said. "Here's the weird thing, though. The whole time, his mother kept saying he'd gone through the door. There was this bit of blank wall in the living room, between a couple of windows, and she just sat by it, knocking on it and calling his name. Saying that there was a door there, and he'd gone through it. Granted, maybe she was hysterical; some of the neighbors seemed to think she was... just, you know, not right, but..."

"But maybe there was a door," Jack finished. He and Owen shared a look; Tosh was surprised at how serious Owen's face was at that moment. He'd been slagging off the case from the moment Jack announced they were taking it, the missing cats, the missing ghost hunter; even Ianto's pointed references to fairies couldn't seem to stop him. But, then, he _had_ stopped: somewhere between leaving to talk with Navidson's UK-Paranormal minders and getting back to the Hub, he'd gone quiet and serious. The thought made Tosh feel a bit uneasy.

Jack reached over to the controls set on the far side of the table; the lights in the room dimmed, and the screen on the far wall lit up. The image was almost steady, but not quite; a handheld camera, probably. There didn't seem to be anything special about it, though -- it was just a door, in a wall. There was one window to the left of it, another to the right. Both windows were open. "This is the last thing Navidson sent to UK-Paranormal before they lost contact with him," Jack said. The camera dropped down to the floor, tracking a few wobbly steps before lifting up again, now right in front of the window, now going through it and outside. Again, the camera dropped, showing well-kept flower beds being trodden through by heavy feet. Then the camera lifted and turned, skimming over a quick glimpse of the someone's front yard before turning to the white siding of the house. For a few moments, it focused on the plain, flat wall. Then it dropped again as the camera operator moved right, climbing in through the other window, completing the circle and once again standing in front of the door. A hand appeared, reaching out to grasp the door's handle, pulling it open. Where there should have been nothing more than insulation, or at best a shallow cubby terminating in white vinyl siding, there was instead a narrow hallway, shockingly dark on the inside; the light from the living room barely lifted the gloom. The camera trembled, and then there was a bit more light, a torch or a small spot trained into the darkness. It was difficult to say, but the hallway had to go on for at least ten feet. Probably more.

Out through the window again. Back to the exterior wall. This time, the camera's operator backed up a bit, to show the full view -- one window to the right, one window to the left, the wall completely smooth and flat between them. Then back inside, and the hallway was still there, as impossible as it was. The camera moved in, one step, then another. "It's freezing in here," the camera's operator said. Then the screen went blank.

When the lights came up again, Gwen was frowning, double-checking her notes. "That _could_ be the same door," she concluded, after a moment. "Assuming there really was a door in the first place. But Jack, how do we know that the footage wasn't doctored somehow? Or edited? Or that it was even taken at the same house?"

Jack grinned, showing his teeth. "We don't. But there's an easy way to find out."

*

"Anything?" Ianto asked, wandering aimlessly around the unfurnished room. So far the house was completely empty and uninteresting: no mysterious doors, no tunnels into endless night, not even Navidson's belongings, although he'd been camped out at the house for several days before vanishing. It was, Tosh thought, almost a little _too_ empty.

She frowned down at her scanner. "Just that same fluttering," she said. "It's stronger now, though. Look."

Ianto crossed behind her, studying the scanner from over her shoulder. Whatever energy was present, either in this house or near it, it was strong enough to produce definite peaks and valleys, just slightly irregular, like an EKG line. It wasn't the same as a Rift spike, though, not steady, just a constant shifting presence. "Stronger now than before we entered the house?"

"Definitely. If nothing else, we've figured out what was causing the problems with our Rift readings."

"Now we just have to figure out what it is, and what to do about it." Ianto's eyes met hers for a moment, but then they were sliding away, back towards the white, unmarked walls of the unfurnished room they were standing in. "That's odd," he said, stepping around her, moving towards a door set in the wall. "I could've sworn..." His fingers closed around the knob, but he didn't pull it open. Hesitating.

He'd hesitated on the walkway, too; Tosh had been so absorbed in her scanner that she'd nearly run into him. Hesitated on the foot of the stairs; Tosh had looked back and seen him there, one hand on the banister, one foot on the first step, his eyes turned towards the living room, as though looking for something. "This must remind you of the house you grew up in," Tosh guessed, and immediately felt what a stupid thing that was to say.

Ianto just chuckled, and his eyes were still crinkled in a smile when he turned back to look at her. "Not at all. We never lived anywhere near as..." His voice trailed off, then, and he turned back to the door, turning the knob and pushing it open. There was no dark hallway, narrow and oppressive, stretching out before them. Just a few feet of white-painted corridor, and a door at the other end. "Well," Ianto said. "It doesn't look as though it wants to eat me."

"Yes, well, you can never really trust architecture," Tosh said, closing up behind him, the scanner held in front of her like a shield. She couldn't be completely sure, but she thought the spikes were somewhat taller now, coming more rapidly.

"Only one way to find out," Ianto muttered, and stepped inside. He stood there for a moment, running his hands over the walls, as if trying to feel out any difference. "Seems normal enough." Another step had him in the middle of the strange space; Tosh felt the strangest urge to grab him by the jacket and pull him out again. "Cold in here."

"No heating vents," Tosh pointed out.

"Still, you'd think the residual heat from the rest of the house..." Two more steps saw Ianto to the other door; he pushed that one open as well. It led back into the master suite. "Huh."

Tosh let out a deep breath. "This must have been used as a child's bedroom," she said. "The parents could go back and forth between, checking up on strange sounds or anything."

Ianto frowned at her over his shoulder. "It's no easier than going into the hallway and around," he pointed out. "And I'd have sworn there wasn't this much space between the two rooms to begin with."

"We could measure it," Tosh suggested.

"More to the point, how did we miss this door when we were examining the master suite? We should have found this earlier."

"We must've--"

Before she could finish, Jack's voice was sounding in her ear. _"As I stood upon the stair, I saw a door that wasn't there. It wasn't there again today. I wish, I wish --"_

Ianto shook his head. "You've butchered that quote, Sir." But he spun on his heel, heading back down the little hallway. Tosh turned as well; if their mysterious door had reappeared, she wanted a chance to get some readings before the others were plunging willy-nilly into the darkness. It wasn't until she'd reached the door of the children's room that she realized Ianto wasn't behind her.

He had stopped just before the doorway that would take him out of the corridor and into the children's room; he had one hand on either wall, his face turned towards the ceiling. He was hesitating. "Funny," he said, quietly. "It seems like it should be so much bigger, doesn't it?"

"Ianto?" She stepped back into the room, watching him.

After a few seconds, he refocused, his eyes settling on her. "Right," he said. "Let's go see what Jack's found."

*

_"Well, someone's been down here,"_ Owen said, his voice echoing strangely over the comms.

Ianto looked up from his unpacking; he and Gwen had pulled a motley assortment of spelunking gear out of the SUV after Jack's initial foray revealed that the house's mysterious hallway stretched on for at least a mile, possibly more. Tosh had asked him once why they carried miner's headlamps with them. Now it looked as though they might actually be useful. "Got something, have you?" he asked.

_"Reflective tape, on the walls. Whoever it was, looks like they were trying to leave themselves a trail, in case they got lost on their way back. Dunno if it's Navidson's, though. Looks like it's been here a while."_

Gwen frowned at no one in particular. "That estate agent was pretty insistent that no one had been in the house unsupervised, though. Just Navidson. Well, and us."

_"Well, it's been a rough few days for this tape, then. Looks like something with claws went after it. Might have been the missing cats."_

Tosh glanced over at Gwen; Gwen's eyes were worried. "Hang on," Ianto said. "I thought you were traveling in a straight line -- no twists, no turns, no other hallways. So why would Navidson need help finding his way back?"

_"Same reason you gave us a spool of fishing line to mark a trail with?"_ Owen asked. _"Which is none, as far as I can see."_

_"Maybe he was just being cautious,"_ Jack said. _"Maybe it gets more complicated as it goes on. Given that this place wasn't_ here _when we first entered the house, I wouldn't be surprised if the walls started shifting on us."_ And it was almost like Jack could see Ianto's eyebrows drawing together in the beginnings of a frown, because he was quick to add, _"Which is why we're heading back. I want to return to the Hub, see if we can't cobble together some sort of tracking system in case things go wrong. And we'll need more supplies; this place is huge, and we're not going to explore the whole thing in just a few hours. It could take days."_

_"Also, it's getting late, and I'm starving,"_ Owen said.

_"That too,"_ Jack said. _"See you in a few."_

The comms went quiet, then; Tosh looked over at Ianto and Gwen. Gwen was chewing her lip, still frowning; Ianto had a bit of rope in his hands and was twisting it, staring into the darkness just behind the door. "Well," Tosh said, when it was plain that no one else was going to talk. "Looks like it'll be another late night."

Gwen nodded. "I should call Rhys," she said. But she didn't reach for her phone.

Ianto just stared into the darkness, twisting the rope in his hands.

*

Gwen had fallen asleep stretched out on top of her sleeping bag, her head pillowed on her jacket, Ianto's wool coat spread over her like a blanket. Ianto himself was nowhere in sight; he'd helped Tosh get the laptop set up, with the portable Rift monitor next to it, everything plugged in and tested, then gone back to the SUV to unload the rest of the supplies. He'd gone in and out at least four times before Tosh had gotten too absorbed in her work to keep count.

Jack had been right about the hallway changing over time; he and Owen hadn't been in there ten minutes before they found the first of several hallways, branching off from the main path, twisting and turning. Tosh watched them on her laptop, the tracking devices that they wore showing up as bright red dots on the screen, using a bit of hastily cobbled together software to try and build a map of the labyrinth around them. They hadn't gone very far before turning around and heading back towards the main path. It was the same with the next hallway, and the one after that -- they'd go down a bit, realize it was another endless corridor, then head back to the main path. Eventually, they'd just let the side passages go unexplored.

The main hallway had eventually led them into a large room, and from there into another, even vaster space. They'd been exploring the Great Hall ever since.

_"There's a staircase here,"_ Jack said, at long last. _"Spiral. Looks like it goes down... well... forever, pretty much."_

_"Before you ask, Harkness, I'm not going down there."_ Owen sounded tired. _"Not unless you want to carry me back up."_

_"Guess that settles it,"_ Jack said. He, of course, didn't sound tired at all. _"We'll come back in the morning, see where it leads. Who knows, we might find --"_ His voice died before he finished the thought. _"Did you hear that?"_

_"Yeah."_ Owen's voice was tense, strained. Behind her, Tosh heard a rustling; Gwen was sitting up.

"Owen? Jack?" There was always something unsettling about hearing one of her teammates in her ear and in her earpiece at the same time, a strange echo that Tosh couldn't seem to get used to. "What's happening?"

_"Dunno,"_ Owen said. _"There was a noise, kind of like a --"_

_"I've got something."_ Ianto's voice. Tosh froze, glancing back at Gwen in alarm. She hadn't seen him go into the hallway, but then, she hadn't really been looking. But he wouldn't head into the labyrinth alone, would he? _"There's a box here; Navidson's things, maybe. Papers, some photographs--"_

_"Ianto, where are you?"_ Jack's voice was sharp with irritation, maybe fear.

_"Upstairs; children's bedroom."_ Without a word, Gwen scrambled to her feet and hurried to the stairs, taking them two at a time. _"Jack, Tosh and I went through every cupboard and cubbyhole in this room. This box wasn't here before."_

Jack sighed; it went through the earpiece straight into Tosh's bones. _"Right. Bring it down. We'll be back in a bit to help go through it. And Ianto? Do_ not _wander off again without checking with me first. This place is changing constantly; if you just leave without a tracker on, and get stuck somewhere--"_

Tosh thought she could almost hear Ianto rolling his eyes. _"Of course, Sir. I'll see you when you get back."_

There was a momentary pause. Then the two dots of Owen and Jack's tracking devices were moving again, taking the same straight line that had led them into the Great Hall. Gwen had found Ianto; Tosh could hear their voices, too muffled for her to make out the words. Footsteps sounded on the ceiling above her, and she decided that it didn't really matter. They were coming back. That was what counted.

*

"'Ftaires.'" Owen drawled the word out, over-pronouncing the "F" in a way that Tosh thought was deliberately calculated to drive the rest of them mad. "'We Haue Found Ftaires.'"

"I believe the word is 'stairs,' Owen," Ianto said. "Which you did find, if I remember correctly." He took the battered journal from Owen's outstretched hands and flipped through it. "This isn't anywhere near old enough to match the language being used. Could be copied from an older document, maybe. Or some student creative writing project. One of the two. Navidson must have thought it was important, anyway." He held the book out to Tosh. "What do you think? Early Modern?"

She set aside the file she'd been working on to take the journal from him. It looked like it was some sort of traveller's journal, an expedition log, something like that. The writing was fragmentary at best -- sometimes whole paragraphs, sometimes just words or bits of sentences, centered on the page. "Could be. Sixteenth century, maybe." She handed the journal back. "Cardiff was already a city at that point, wasn't it?"

"County Town of Glamorganshire," Ianto said, flipping back to the beginning to examine the journal more closely. "It was smaller then, though. They hadn't settled out as far as Cyncoed yet." He frowned down at the pages. "I wonder if we could find the original of this somewhere..."

Tosh watched him for a bit longer, then turned back to the stenographer's pad she'd been looking at. Navidson had devoted quite some time to researching the previous owners of the house. Most of the names had a note next to them: "deceased," maybe, or "couldn't find," something like that. One of the names, however, was highlighted, starred, and heavily annotated. "Alun Jones," she read, and looked up at Ianto; he raised an eyebrow at her. "Don't suppose he's related?"

Ianto shrugged, thoughtfully. "My dad's name is Alun. Of course, so is my old dentist, one of my primary school teachers, three of my primary school classmates... Jack, you're humming again."

Jack held up a piece of paper, turned so Ianto could see. "It's sheet music," he said. "Kind of." Tosh thought Jack was being overly charitable; someone, presumably a child, had attempted to transcribe some music onto a sheet of lined paper. There was no time signature, and the notes were nothing more than black dots gracing the lines. "I know I know this song." And he promptly went back to humming.

Tosh grinned at Ianto, who only shook his head, and went back to studying Navidson's notes. "It looks like Alun Jones owned the house from 1987 until 1988. Maybe he was the owner of the house when that little boy vanished." Tosh glanced over at Gwen, who was flipping through some sort of scrapbook, eyes saucer-wide. "D'you -- Gwen? You all right?"

"Fine." Gwen clapped the book shut with a sudden snap, setting it aside. "Navidson's old war photographs," she added, by way of explanation. "It's funny, the things you see in this life -- and yet those pictures still get to me."

Tosh gave her a small smile, and was trying to think of something comforting to say, when Jack burst into song. "Dominique, nique, nique s'en allait tous simplement, routier, pauvre et chantant..." The others could only gape; he laughed, apparently completely unembarrassed. "It's 'Dominique.' Come on, Soeur Sourire? The Singing Nun? One of you _has_ to have heard of the Singing Nun."

"I have," Owen said, with great reluctance. "And if you slept with her, Jack, I don't want to know."

Grinning, Gwen dove back into the box, coming up with a sheaf of papers. Her smile quickly faded into a look of concentration. "Jack, was Navidson a smoker?"

Jack shrugged. "Not that I'm aware of, but I didn't know him that well. Why?"

She passed over a sheaf of papers. "Look at all the burn marks. I can't tell if it was an accident, or if he was trying to ... erase something completely."

"Bit of an overkill," Ianto murmured, leaning in to examine the papers in Jack's hands until the two of them were pressed shoulder-to-shoulder. "He's already struck most of it out... That one might be Theseus; what do you think?"

Jack frowned down at the paper, his finger joining Ianto's in tracing the scratched and burnt words. "Which would make that Ariadne, and the secret word is... Minotaur."

"'The roar of the Minotaur,'" Ianto quoted. "You said you heard something down in the labyrinth, didn't you?"

"Right before you found the box," Jack said, his face shifting into a frown. "This was up in the children's room?"

"There's a sort of... hallway, between the children's room and the master bedroom," Ianto said, turning back to the battered journal in his hands. "I wasn't sure if it was supposed to be part of the house or not, so I --" He gave Jack a sidelong glance, then, and fell abruptly silent.

"And you didn't tell me about this hallway earlier, because --"

"This is sweet," Gwen announced, halting the argument before it could get a chance to start. "Sort of, anyway. 'Dear Mam. I am sorry for getting into fights at school. I know that I should control my temper and not get angry when people make fun. It's not their fault that they can't understand, and I should try to be better than they are, and not --'"

"May I?" Ianto's voice was unusually sharp, and he reached across the pile of photographs and notes to snatch the paper from Gwen's hands without waiting for her to reply. She stared at him; everyone was staring, but Ianto didn't look up from the letter. It trembled in Ianto's hands as he studied it. "Huh," he said, quietly.

"Something wrong?" Jack's tone wasn't as light as he probably thought it was; there was an uncertainty in it, an anxiety.

"I wrote this." Ianto's eyes never left the paper; he'd gone pale. "Ages ago. My mam was... she was sick in hospital, and some of the boys were... Anyway, when Da couldn't get me to leave off fighting, he told me I'd have to write her and apologize every time I got into trouble. I only ever had to write the one letter, so I suppose it worked." Gwen rested a hand on his knee. Finally, he looked up, his eyes settling on Jack. "But how did Navidson get it? And why... It's nothing to do with this. At all."

"I don't know," Jack said.

Owen had picked another paper off the pile. He studied it for a few moments, then handed it to Ianto without a word. Ianto stared at it for a long time, barely moving. When he finally looked up again, his eyes were huge. He thrust the paper at Jack, then hurried out of the room, leaving the rest of them to stare after him.

Jack looked down at the paper for a few moments, then turned it so that the others could see. It was an ordinary enough piece of lined paper, wide-ruled, made for a child's huge letters. At the top, someone had printed the words "Draw a picture of your house," in large, round letters; the sort of handwriting that a primary school teacher might have. The rest of the page was taken up with a black square, done in several layers of crayon. It was so thick that it stood up off the paper. "He signed it," Jack said, quietly. "I. Jones."

Tosh looked up to where Ianto had disappeared into the kitchen.

"There's more," Owen said, continuing to rummage through the documents. "Marriage license for Alun Jones and Pelafina Lievre. Birth certificates for Ianto and Rhiannon Jones. School records, medical records, newspaper clippings..." He glanced up from the sheaf of papers in his hands. "Jack, his whole _life_ is here. How did Navidson get this stuff? And more to the point, why?"

"Jack, Navidson called Ianto," Tosh said, as the memory suddenly resurfaced. "The day before he came to this house, he called and left a message on Ianto's voicemail, looking for information about the house. Ianto said he never got around to calling him back. He was too busy."

Jack's face was stony; he stared down at the papers in his hand, not speaking. "Jack," Gwen said, finally. "What are we going to do?"

"I don't know," Jack said, quietly. "I don't know."

*

It wasn't Jack's voice that had woken her, but it was Jack's voice that kept her awake, a soothing murmur of words that she couldn't quite make out but didn't want to let go of, either. They weren't directed at her, of course, but that was all right; she wasn't going to begrudge Ianto that. At the moment, she wasn't much prepared to begrudge him anything.

The murmur broke off after a bit. Tosh could hear Ianto's sleeping bag, sliding along the floor. He was probably sitting up. "Want to talk about it?" Jack asked, after a while.

"Not really." Jack chuckled at that, and Ianto let out a tired sigh. "I just... Jack, if I'd ever lived in a place like this, I think I'd remember it. Even without the door, and the black hallways, and..." He left the thought incomplete. "You _know_ where I come from, Jack. And it's about as far from Cyncoed as is possible to be. I'd remember living in a place like this."

"I know," Jack said, quietly. "Look, you said it yourself. There's more than one Alun Jones in Cardiff. Navidson was looking for the previous owners of this house, saw the name Alun Jones, and thought it was your father. It's just a coincidence. Nothing more than that."

"I suppose," Ianto said. He didn't sound very convinced. "It's strange, though. And that song you found, the sheet music... my mother was obsessed with Soeur Sourire. She'd sing 'Dominique' to me every night; it was the only way I'd get to sleep."

"Want me to sing it to you now?" Jack asked; it was half teasing, and half something else entirely, although Tosh couldn't quite put a name to it. It was strange to hear the two of them together like this, almost alone. It wasn't much different from the way they spoke to each other during the day, at the Hub, not really. Just... gentler, somehow. More warmth to it.

"Thanks, no." Ianto sighed again. "The thing is, Jack... If there is something to this, if there's something I've forgotten, or... If something goes wrong down there, I don't want it to be me. I don't want to be a liability, or --"

"I don't want you to be a liability either," Jack said. They were quiet for a bit. "I'd planned to have Tosh stay with the remote setup; she's the one who built the imaging software, and she's better at -- But if you really think it'd be better for you to stay here --"

"It'd be an absolute nightmare," Ianto admitted, and Tosh squelched a perverse pride at that. "I can't do half the things that Tosh can, and we both know it. No, I'll go down; I just..."

"I was going to have someone camped out at the top of the stairs," Jack said, slowly. "As backup, in case we get caught down there, or if Tosh needs --"

Ianto didn't even let him finish. "I'll do it."

"You'll be alone," Jack pointed out. "If something goes wrong --"

"I'll do it," Ianto said again.

"Are you sure you want to go down there?" Jack asked. "Really sure?"

"To be honest, Jack, I don't want to go back down there at all. I mean, not _back_... I mean... I don't know what I mean."

"I know what you mean," Jack said. Tosh was pretty sure, though, that he didn't. "Don't decide yet. Get some sleep, see how you feel in the morning."

"Fair enough," Ianto murmured, although it was plain that he'd already made up his mind. Now it was just a question of Jack coming around to Ianto's way of thinking, which he almost certainly would do by the morning. Because Ianto was right; Tosh was the only one who could handle the monitors and the remote imaging software, and if Ianto were to... if something were to happen to him, it was better that he be near the entrance to the labyrinth, so he could get out quickly. And Jack would need at least two other people to really explore the labyrinth, if they were going to take samples and do readings and figure out what the place was; he couldn't afford to send Ianto back to the Hub and have Gwen or Owen stay behind at the top of the stairs, not if they wanted to know the truth about the labyrinth.

Tosh knew all of those things, as well as Ianto or even Jack. But that didn't mean she was happy about it.

Jack and Ianto were quiet, apart from the soft noises of Ianto settling back into his sleeping bag, trying to get comfortable. "Jack?" Ianto asked after a moment. "Stay here, just for a bit?" Tosh couldn't remember a time when he'd sounded quite so vulnerable.

"I'm right here," Jack replied. "Not going anywhere."

The room fell silent for a long time -- just Gwen and Owen's breathing, the sounds of Ianto shifting, trying to get comfortable on the floor. Maybe his head was in Jack's lap. Maybe Jack was sitting next to him, stroking his hair. Maybe they were just a little closer to each other than they should have been, like they always were at work. Then Jack started singing, very softly. "Dominque, nique, nique... s'en allait tout simplement, routier pauvre et chantant..."

Tosh burrowed deeper into her sleeping bag, and within a few moments, she was fast asleep again.


	2. Chapter 2

_"You know, I used to be terrified of the dark as a kid,"_ Ianto said. _"It wasn't enough to have a nightlight, or even all the lights in my room on. It had to be my light, the hall, the bathroom, a little light in the kitchen... No idea why my father humored it as much as he did. It must have cost them a fortune. But he never complained. My sister did, sometimes, but she was always fond of complaining."_

"Think we've got enough money in the budget to get this place lit up?" Tosh asked. It was silly, perhaps, but it was the first thing she could think of to say. Ianto was all alone down there, had been for ages now, and she couldn't imagine what that would be like for him. "It'd make finding Navidson a bit easier."

Ianto managed a sort of nervous laugh. _"I think we'd burn out the whole grid if we tried,"_ he said. _"This place goes on forever, seems like."_ He was quiet for a while. _"And closets; that was the other thing. I couldn't have the closet door shut at night, for fear that there was something in there, but when Da left it open, I was convinced there was something hiding behind the door. Finally, he just took it right off the --"_

And perhaps it was just because Ianto was speaking at that moment, his comm on, or perhaps it was some odd quirk of the acoustics, but the growl that cut Ianto off mid-word was loud enough to make Tosh flinch; it seemed to be coming from everywhere at once, making the whole house shake. _"Christ,"_ Ianto said, taking a deep breath. _"Jack? Jack? Did you hear that?"_

No reply. Tosh stared at her laptop's screen, feeling her heartrate speed up. "Ianto," she whispered. "I've lost their trackers. I can't see them; I can't --"

_"Jack! Gwen! Owen!"_ Ianto's voice echoed down the headsets, back up through the cavernous spaces of the Labyrinth and into the empty living room where Tosh sat. _"Can you hear me?"_ The silence that followed was deafening. _"Right,"_ Ianto said, softly. _"Tosh. Can you still see the path they took, at least?"_

"Yeah," Tosh said. "I've got it."

_"Right."_ And just like that, Ianto was moving, making his way down the spiral staircase. Tosh could hear his breath, soft and steady, coming through the comms.

"Ianto--" she said, but couldn't finish the sentence.

_"I'll be careful, Tosh,"_ he said. They were quiet for a little bit, just Ianto's breath in her ear, and then: _"Tosh? Could you... just... just talk to me?"_

As always, Tosh's brain went completely blank; she was never much of a conversationalist when put on the spot. But Ianto was down there, in the darkness, alone, and she had to say something. She had to. "My mother used to sing to me, when I was little. It was the only time she'd used Japanese. It was all English the rest of the time. Even when I'd learnt Japanese, she still wouldn't speak it with me. She'd just tell me that we were English, and we needed to speak English. I never could figure out why."

_"Huh,"_ Ianto replied. Tosh wondered if he'd even been paying attention to her, or if he just wanted the comfort of her voice. Somehow, it wasn't insulting.

"Of course, now when I talk to her, it's all in Japanese," Tosh added, more for something to say than out of any real faith that Ianto was listening. "Not that I really talk to her that much, after --" She stopped short, then; she'd never told Ianto about how she'd come to Torchwood, about her crime, her imprisonment, her bargain with Jack. And although she thought she might tell him someday, it wasn't going to be now. "Anyway," she said after a moment. "I suppose your family spoke Welsh with each other all the time?"

Ianto let out a soft chuckle at that. _"Good God, no,"_ he said. _"No one in my family speaks Welsh at all. Well, my niece and nephew are learning it in school, but they're the only ones. Gwen's sworn to teach me, but so far, it's just been --"_ He stopped, then. Stopped speaking, stopped moving. _"Huh. Tosh, how long would you say it took the others to reach the bottom of the stairs? An hour, maybe?"_

"Fifty-four minutes." The meaning of his words caught up with her a moment later, and she blinked at her screen in disbelief. "Ianto. Ianto, are you --?"

_"Yep,"_ he said, before taking one deep breath, then another. _"All right, Tosh. Which way from here?"_

It was harder to lead him in the others' footsteps than Tosh had thought it would be; he was covering too much ground too quickly, and Tosh had to keep sending him back, doubling his footsteps until he was back on the right path. _"It's like when you're a kid,"_ Ianto said at one point. _"You know how when you go someplace as a child, and it's huge, but then you come back as an adult, and it's so much smaller? Like that. Kind of."_

Upstairs, in the children's bedroom, he'd said the closet space seemed smaller than it should. "Ianto," Tosh whispered, suddenly horribly sure that she knew why he'd said he didn't want to go _back_ down there, and equally aware that she couldn't tell him. "This is where I lost them."

_"Okay,"_ Ianto said, and she realized, too, that Ianto already knew. He'd figured it out sometime while he was sitting in the darkness, at the top of the stairs. _"Okay. Okay. Well. I think I see..."_ He shifted off to the side. _"Owen still had some fishing line left. Looks like we needed it after all."_ Ianto set off again, his tracker moving much more slowly this time. _"Still with me, Tosh?"_

"I see you," she said. "Please be careful, Ianto."

He didn't answer that; she heard him calling out for the others. _"Jack! Owen! Gwen!"_ His voice echoed through the walls, back to where she sat. The first time Jack had gone in, his voice had been swallowed up bare meters from the door. Ianto was miles down now, and she could hear him perfectly. Ianto called out again. The only answer was a soft, rumbling groan, a pale echo of the roar they'd heard earlier. _"Well. That's not very reassuring, is it?"_ There was an edge of barely-contained hysteria to Ianto's voice, and yes, he knew.

"Ianto..." Tosh wished she could call him back up, trade places with him, but it would take him forever to get back up and for her to get down, and she couldn't, but she still wished she could.

_"I don't think we really talked about it, after. Rhiannon did, though. When she was mad at me about something, she'd start to go on and on about how I ruined everything, how we'd had to leave that nice house we used to live in because of me, because I ran off and got lost and ruined everything. I don't think I quite... I think I thought she was making it up, because I didn't remember. I asked Da about it, once, had we lived in a big house, because Rhiannon always said we did. God, he was furious. I still remember... And after that, Rhiannon left it, and it just... faded. Because I was so young, and it was all so... Tosh? Tell me I'm not just talking to myself."_

Tosh swallowed hard. "You're not just talking to yourself, Ianto. I can hear you just fine."

_"Good. That's good."_ He took a deep breath. _"The thing is, I don't actually remember being down here. I remember sneaking out of the kitchen -- Mam was doing the dishes, and she wasn't looking, so I sort of tiptoed out to the living room, and the door was right there, so I... And I remember being in the yard after, soaking wet, and Mam had me on her lap, and she was singing. But I don't remember anything in between. Not a bit of it. Tosh?"_

"I'm here, Ianto," Tosh said, and tried to smile, although she knew there was no one there to see. But then that growl rose up again, louder than before, and she shivered. "Ianto --"

_"Sssh."_ For a long time, all she could hear was Ianto's breath, sharp and shallow in her ear. When she heard the gunshot, it nearly knocked her out of her seat. _"Shit!"_ Ianto hissed.

Neither of them said anything for a few moments. Straining her ears, Tosh thought she could hear a voice, high-pitched and hysterical, coming from somewhere within the house. "Do you hear that?" Tosh asked. "Or is it by --"

_"No, I hear it,"_ Ianto said, breathing in deeply, breathing out again. Terrified. _"Just a little further, I think."_ He didn't move, though. _"Okay. Okay, okay. I'm going to be quiet for a bit, Tosh. Let me know if you lose my tracker."_

"Okay." Tosh took a few deep breaths of her own; she was terrified, too. Ianto's tracker blazed a trail across the screen, slow and steady. Tosh could almost see him, hunched down, torch pointed to illuminate just a bit of the ground stretching out before him, one hand on his gun. He'd be taking small steps, careful not to make a sound, not to disturbe the silence. Even his breath was hushed.

Suddenly, it wasn't quiet at all. Jack's voice rang out, echoing through the house. "Just let us take him back." He was pleading. He only ever sounded like that if one of them were hurt. Owen, maybe? Tosh's heart thudded painfully. "It was an accident. No one has to--"

"I can't! I -- Fuck! FUCK!" That high, hysterical voice again; Navidson, probably. "I'm sorry. I'm sorry, but I can't. I --"

"Yes, you can." Gwen, using her hostage-negotiation tones. "Just put the gun down, and --"

"I've killed enough people, haven't I? I can't go back again, not if --"

_"It's Owen,"_ Ianto murmured into the headset, and Tosh felt her stomach drop. _"He's hurt; I can't tell--"_

"Who's talking?" Navidson was shouting; Tosh wanted to cover her ears to block his voice out. "I can hear you. Come out so I can see you!"

"There's no one there!" Jack would have sounded commanding if he hadn't sounded so desperate. "Look at me! Navy, please. Just look at me!"

The silence stretched out, interminable. "I see you," Navidson said, finally. His voice was horribly calm. "I see you. I see what you _are_."

There was a sudden flurry of gunfire.

Tosh leapt to her feet, the monitors and tracking devices all forgotten. "Jack! Ianto! Gwen! Owen! _Anyone!_ "

"Jack!" Gwen's voice, horrified.

"Take Owen and get out of here!" Ianto's voice, as clear as if he were standing right beside her, but Tosh couldn't see, couldn't help him.

"But Jack --"

"I've got him! Just run, Gwen! Run!"

"Ianto! Behind you!"

Another gunshot.

Two in quick succession.

And then silence, stretching out the same way that darkness stretched out.

"Ianto!" Tosh scrambled back to her computer. The screen was black; no tracking devices, no map of the Labyrinth; no way of finding her friends. "Jack! Gwen! Owen! Someone, please!" Silence. "Damn it!" She collapsed into her chair, covering her mouth with both hands. She had to think. Just... think.

No comms, no tracking devices, no map. But Owen had been carrying Ianto's fishing line with him, a single filament marking their path into the center of the Labyrinth. She'd follow that. Tosh was out of the chair in a flash, scooping up her pack and gathering supplies -- a torch, some water, some energy bars, the spare first-aid kit. She checked her gun, making sure that it was loaded, and without giving herself a chance to think about it, headed through the door and into the darkness.

It was so cold. The others had mentioned it, of course _(Ianto standing in that strange closet-like space between the children's room and the master bedroom, saying "It's cold in here")_ , but it hadn't been real until she felt it, so cold, like the darkness was folding itself around her, into her, penetrating straight to the bone. She should've worn a jacket. It didn't matter.

"Jack!" she called. "Owen! Ianto! Gwen! Jack!" No answer. It didn't matter.

She kept her torch pointed forward, her fingers closed around Ianto's strand of fishing line. Ariadne's thread. She wondered which of them was Theseus. She was pretty sure it wasn't her. It was probably Jack. It nearly always was.

It didn't matter.

"Jack!" she called. "Owen! Ianto! Gwen! Jack!" The darkness swallowed each name before it had the chance to echo, swallowed every word she spoke and answered with its own roar, the shifting of hallways, architecture realigning itself to ensnare her deeper into the maze. Didn't matter. She kept one hand on her torch, the other on the fishing line. She wished she had a third hand with which to hold her gun. If there really was a Minotaur down here, or if Navidson came upon her _(if Navidson was the Minotaur)_ , she wouldn't have much time to draw, aim, and shoot. Didn't matter.

She kept one hand on her torch, the other on the fishing line, and she ran, calling out their names, listening as the darkness roared back at her, and the rest of it didn't matter.

"Owen! Ianto! Gwen! Jack!" Her throat was already raw, her breathing coming harshly, and for all she knew, they were all dead; for all she knew, she was running into a trap; for all she knew...

_"Tosh?"_

"Gwen!" Tosh picked up speed, her heels skidding along the floors of the Labyrinth.

_"Tosh... Owen's... I'm not sure if he... and Ianto... Jack..."_

Tosh's stomach lurched, because she knew what it meant, when Gwen sounded like that, when there was no courage left in her. But she kept running. "Where are you?"

_"The stairs... they just... they stretched... and Jack and Ianto were still..."_

Tosh flicked the beam of her torch upwards; she thought she could just pick out a ceiling. This was the Large Room, then. The Great Hall was ahead of her. "Can you move Owen?"

_"He's bleeding too much; I can't stop it."_

That gave Tosh the extra bit of speed she needed; rounding a corner, she saw a dim light at the end of a vast field of ash-grey, and she knew. "Gwen!" she shouted. Gwen turned, raised a hand. As Tosh drew nearer, she saw the blood on it. Owen's blood. Owen himself was half-conscious on Gwen's lap, his hand clutching at his neck.

Tosh dropped to her knees next to them, letting go of both the fishing line and the torch so that she could wriggle out of her rucksack, grab the first aid kit. "We found Navidson," Gwen said. "He'd been down here too long, I think. This place, it... He didn't even say anything at first, just... just started shooting. He stopped when he'd hit something. I think he realized..."

"Let me see how bad it is, Owen," Tosh murmured, slowly peeling his fingers away from his neck. He blinked up at her.

"Tosh," he croaked. "S'not that bad, honest. Think it deflected off my jaw." He managed a choking sort of a laugh. "So much for my good looks..."

She wiped the blood away as best as she could; it had bled heavily, but neck wounds always did. He was coherent; that was a start. "You'll be fine, Owen," she said, and mustered up a smile for him. "Gorgeous as ever."

"Then he said he couldn't go back. He said he'd have to..." Gwen wiped at her eyes, distractedly; the gesture left dark smudges on her cheeks. Owen's blood. It was everywhere. "He shot Jack. And then Ianto... Just, out of nowhere, there he was, firing away. He shot Navidson. I'd never seen him shoot anyone before. Then he told me to run, so I did." She turned away from Tosh, staring back into the darkness. "I lost my pack," she added.

There weren't scissors in the first aid kit; still pressing a square of gauze to Owen's neck with one hand, Tosh used the other to lift the medical tape to her mouth, ripping off a long strip with her teeth. "Unhygenic," Owen muttered, then sighed. "It's fucking cold, Tosh."

Tosh took a deep breath, and told herself that Owen was just bitching about the temperature. That he wasn't going into shock. "At least you've got a jacket." She picked up his hand and placed it back on his neck, over her crude bandages. "Right. Keep putting pressure on. We're getting you out of here."

"They'd just started climbing the Stairs," Gwen said. "Jack and Ianto... I could just see them at the bottom, see their light. And then... It was like they just... sank. Like a stone. There was nothing I could do."

_"It's like when you're a kid. You know how when you go someplace as a child, and it's huge, but then you come back as an adult, and it's so much smaller?"_

They should have known that the Labyrinth could grow just as easily as it could shrink.

Tosh pushed the thought away, wrapped Owen's arm around her shoulders and her arms around his body and lifted him up like a baby. He was lighter than she thought he'd be. Or maybe she was just stronger than she thought she was. It didn't matter. "Keep that pressure on," she said, and turned to Gwen. Gwen was still gazing down at the Spiral Staircase, down into the darkness where Jack and Ianto were lost. It didn't matter. "Ianto left a trail; the fishing line, remember? It's just to the left there. We'll use that to get out."

Gwen blinked at her, like she was seeing her for the first time. "We can't just leave them," she said, but there was no real force behind the words.

"They'll be all right," Tosh said. "They'll get out." Gwen didn't move, and Tosh snapped. "Owen's shot. He could be dying. Pick up the torch, find the fishing line, and help me save him!"

Gwen blinked again; she looked close to tears. Tosh felt close to tears herself, but it didn't matter. None of it mattered. Then Gwen picked up the torch left abandoned by her feet, wrapped her fingers around Ianto's thread, and began to lead them out of the Labyrinth.

*

They bundled Owen into the ambulance. Gwen went with him, to bully the doctors and flash her credentials when necessary; she'd gotten good at it when Jack left. Tosh stayed outside the house, waiting until the patrol car at the end of the block was finally gone, until there was no one standing on their lawn and staring, no one peering curiously through the curtains.

She wondered how many of them had peered through the curtains the first time that the house took Ianto.

She waited until everyone else was gone. Then she went back inside, drawing her gun as she went. She grabbed up Gwen's abandoned torch (it was still sticky with Owen's blood), opened the door, and went back to find her friends.

About ten feet in, the hallway came to an abrupt stop.

Tosh beat the ash-gray wall until her fists were bloody; she pushed and she kicked and she sobbed. It made no difference; the hallway didn't expand; the wall didn't crumble. And, eventually, she turned and left the corridor, went back into the house proper, and closed the door behind her.

Her portable Rift monitor was quiet. There was nothing, not even the barest flutter of movement.

She ran a dozen scans, one after the other. Nothing.

Hours later, she fell asleep in her chair.

The door was gone by the time she woke up.

*

Tosh sank back into the folding chair, pressing the palms of her hands into her eyes. When she took them away again, there was a cup of coffee sitting at the edge of the table. The handle was turned away from her, and when she sipped it, it was too bitter. She smiled at Gwen anyway; it seemed like the thing to do. "Thanks," she said.

Gwen smiled back at her, leaning against the wall near Tosh's temporary workstation. "Anything yet?" she asked. Tosh could only shake her head, and Gwen's smile faded. "Still," she said, finally. "It's only been three days. They'll come back."

"They'll come back," Tosh agreed, and took another sip of the coffee. "Going to check on Owen?" she asked, after a moment.

"He's been cleared to go home," Gwen said. "Thought I'd drop him there. Or I'll bring him back with me; he's getting itchy, sitting there in hospital by himself. We'll see what kind of a shape he's in. And I was going to pick something up for dinner. What do you think? Chinese?"

Tosh turned away from the computer and looked at Gwen, really looked at her for the first time in days. Gwen hadn't washed her hair; it hung limply around her face. There were bags under her eyes; her fingertips were ink-smeared from going through old files, and her jeans were covered with dust from her many excursions into the archives. "It's been three days," Tosh said, finally. "Go home. See Rhys. Get some sleep. Nothing's going to happen tonight, anyway. For all we know, they won't ever --" Her throat closed up unexpectedly, and she had to cover her eyes to hold back the tears.

Gwen rested a hand on Tosh's shoulder. "We'll get them out of there, Tosh," she said, firmly. "We'll figure it out, somehow. And if not, then they'll have to make it out on their own. But they can, Tosh. I know they can." She hesitated, before adding, "And I haven't asked you if you want to go home, because I know you wouldn't do it. It's not any different for me, Tosh. I want to be here when they get back. And I'm going to be here. No matter what." Then she was walking away, scooping up her coat. "Did you want soup, or just your usual?"

Tosh took a deep breath, then another. "Soup sounds lovely," she said, at last. "Gwen?" Gwen hesitated at the door, glancing back at her. "They'll be back."

"They'll be back," Gwen said, and left the house.

Tosh turned back to her laptop, staring at the line of the Rift monitor, hoping for some kind of spike, even a flutter; for something, anything that would signal an end to all of this. But everything was quiet, had been for the last three days. The door was still gone, as was the little passage between the master bedroom and the children's room. There was nothing, no sign that anything unusual had happened here, could have ever happened here. Only Jack and Ianto were still gone.

Still, Jack had come back far too many times for Tosh to give up faith now, and Ianto...

From time to time, Tosh found herself wondering what it must have been like for him, to be stuck in that place for so long as a child. Could he hear his mother, calling out for him? Had he looked for her, tried to follow her voice? Or had he just wandered, lost, in that darkness, until he finally found his way out? She couldn't imagine it, not that she was trying particularly hard. There was something too horrible about it, and she could never bear to speculate on it for very long.

Still nothing on the Rift monitors. She stood up, stretching her sore back, and went into the kitchen to rinse out her mug. "Dominique, nique, nique," she sang, under her breath. She'd caught herself doing that a lot, lately. "S'en allait tout simplement..."

At first, she thought the knocking was coming from the pipes. But when she stopped the water, there it was again, a soft tapping, like someone was knocking at the door. Steeling herself, she grabbed her Torchwood ID and hurried to the door.

There was no one there.

Sighing, she pressed the door shut. The knocking began again, almost immediately.

_"Ianto? Ianto, love, can you hear me?"_

Wheeling about, Tosh ran to the blank wall, between the two windows. "Jack?" she called out. "Ianto?"

Silence.

She knocked on the wall, called out again and again. "Jack! Ianto!"

_"There's someone knocking in the wall."_

The voice was a child's; a little girl's, Tosh thought. She stared around, wildly, trying to figure out where the sound was coming from. Laughter, then, and the faintest echo of a song.

_"Dominique, nique, nique_

_S'en allait tout simplement_

_Routier pauvre et chantant..."_

Tosh looked over her shoulder at the Rift monitors. They were off the scale. She scrambled for her mobile, dialing Gwen's number.

There was no signal.

_"I know it's dark, sweetheart, but you can hear me, can't you? Follow my voice. I'll get you out. Just follow my voice."_

"Where are you?" she shouted. "Who are you?"

Somewhere in the walls, she could hear a little boy crying.

"Ianto?"

The crying continued, unabated. Tosh closed her eyes, concentrating. It was coming from above her.

She took the stairs two at a time.

When she reached the children's room, there was a door in the wall, a door that hadn't been there that morning. Heart racing, Tosh lunged for it, pulling it open, and nearly tumbled into the dark chasm that had once been an innocuous corridor. She clung to the doorframe, attempting to steady herself.

Then the roar issued forth, louder than ever, and she shivered.

"Ianto!" she called again. "Jack! Say something!"

_"En tous chemins, en tous lieux_

_Il ne parle que du bon Dieu_

_Il ne parle que du bon Dieu..."_

"Ianto!" she called, reaching one hand out into the darkness. The crying was louder now, almost coming closer. "I'm here! Ianto, I'm here!"

_"Where are you?"_

"I'm right here!" She stretched herself further, reaching out. "Can you hear me? Follow my voice!"

There was a cold shock when tiny fingers touched hers, clasped her hand, held it. "I've got you!" Tosh cried, feeling strangely triumphant.

Then, with a roar, the floor went out from under her.

Tosh could only cling to the doorframe with one hand, still feeling a child's hand gripping the other, trying desperately to pull herself back up without dislodging his grip. He was still crying, although it had quietened now, and she wasn't going to let him go, she wasn't. "I've got you," she said, gritting her teeth as her fingers started to slip, as she started to lose her hold. "Just hold on! It's going to be all right. I've got you."

But her fingers were slipping, and the darkness was tugging at her, and she knew she wasn't going to win this one.

_"It's okay,"_ the boy said, and when Tosh turned to look down into the darkness, she could almost see him, a pale, solemn face peering up at her. _"You can go now."_

Then the tiny hand was gone, and the roaring rose up again, like an explosion, pushing her forward until she managed to get a grip on the floor, swing one leg up, and pull herself back to solid ground. She scrambled to safety as fast as she could, not even bothering to haul herself to her feet until she was out of the children's room, back in the hallway.

When she turned to look back, the entire room had been swallowed up by darkness.

The roar followed her as she turned and fled, down the stairs, through the living room, flinging the front door open and throwing herself down the steps, hitting the lawn hard as, behind her, the house crumbled as though it were only made out of cards.

*

"Tosh? Tosh!"

It was dark, and cold, and for a moment, Tosh thought she'd -- but there was a soft hand on her hair, and another on her shoulder, and then Tosh opened her eyes, and realized it wasn't as dark as all that. There were streetlights shining on them, and the grass was covered with dew. She was soaked to the skin, and absolutely frozen stiff. "Gwen?" she asked. "What happened?"

Gwen helped her to sit up, wrapping a blanket around her shoulders. Tosh clutched at the fabric, grateful for its warmth. "I think I'm supposed to ask you that, aren't I?" Gwen asked, pressing a bottle of water into Tosh's fingers before leaning in to brush the hair off Tosh's face, examining her for cuts and scrapes. "I tried calling you from the hospital, but your phone was dead."

Tosh took a long pull of the water. "There wasn't any signal," she murmured. She tried to think of something to add, maybe a question that she needed to ask, but she never got the chance.

"Gwen! I need those blankets!"

"Right. Other patients." Gwen patted Tosh's shoulder, then pushed up to her feet, grabbing a bundle of blanket and taking it with her. "Coming!"

Tosh watched her run across the lawn. Owen was kneeling several yards away, crouched over a dark shape. Gwen hurried to his side, handing over the blankets. Owen was talking; he did like to narrate his medical exploits, always had. "... Bit hypothermic, maybe, although I can't... dunno how much food, so... could be frostbite..."

It clicked, suddenly, and Tosh pushed herself to her feet, legs shaking. She wanted to run, but instead could only stumble across the lawn until she collapsed in a heap, next to where Jack and Ianto lay, side-by-side, on the lawn. "Jack! Ianto! Are they really..."

"One of these days, someone's actually going to stay put when I say," Owen muttered, but he took one of Tosh's hands and laid it gently on Ianto's neck. His skin was like ice, and his pulse was a little irregular, a little faint, but it was still very much there. He was alive. "Don't know what you did, Tosh, but you did it," he said. "Only next time, wait for us, right?"

"I didn't do anything," Tosh whispered, her fingers still pressed to Ianto's neck. "I didn't --"

But then Ianto's eyes opened, and she thought her heart would stop. He looked straight at her, and his cracked lips lifted in a small smile. "Huh," he said, softly. "It worked." And without another word, he rolled over, wrapped his arm around Jack's waist, and lapsed back into unconsciousness.

Tosh looked at Owen. He looked back at her. "Well," he said. "Guess that settles everything." Then he sighed. "Right, girls. Let's get these two up and into the SUV, shall we?"

*

Two days later, Tosh and Ianto stood side-by-side on the lawn, waiting.

"It wasn't so bad, really," he said. "Gwen left her pack behind, and we found yours when the stairs collapsed back down, so there was food, and water. Jack wouldn't eat, of course. I did manage to get him to drink some water, at least. Didn't want to watch him -- I know he comes back, but..."

Tosh reached out to take his hand. His fingers were slow to close around hers, stiff and clumsy beneath a thick layer of bandages. Owen had ordered him to take at least one more day before returning to the Hub, although he had cleared him for this little clean-up operation. "But we had food, and we had water, and we had someone to talk to, which is a start. I think that's where Navidson..." He shook his head. "Anyway. Mostly, we just wandered. I had a thought that if we could find the center, we'd find... you know, some bit of alien tech, something we could smash or deactivate or... do something to. It didn't sink in for a while, the idea that there was just... nothing. No center, no minotaur, nothing to defeat or destroy, just... It was harder on Jack, I think. He didn't say it, but you know how he gets. Helpless doesn't suit him."

"No," Tosh said. Staring into the open windows, she thought she could see a spark.

"When I heard the singing, I decided we'd better start walking towards it. Didn't think we'd get there, but at least we'd have a goal, you know?" There was a definite glow inside the house now, getting brighter all the time. "But I could hear it getting louder, as we got closer, and it just... it clicked. Fell into place. I don't even remember what it was now, I just remember that I _knew_ , for just a moment, what I had to do." Tosh could see flames now, licking at the curtains. "I remember your hand, though. We were falling and falling, and I felt your hand, and it just..." He shrugged. "I don't know. It made sense at the time."

She smiled up at him. He stooped down to kiss her forehead. A window shattered, somewhere in the vicinity of the kitchen, and flames burst out. "We should probably go," Tosh said.

Still holding hands, they hurried back to the SUV, vanishing into the night before the firetrucks could arrive.

"So, one more day of sick leave," Tosh said, as they sped away from Cyncoed, towards Tosh's own little flat. "Any big plans?"

Ianto smiled. "My sister's asked me around for brunch," he said. "Thought I'd let her fuss over me for a bit, then... Maybe go visit my mam, after. I haven't... It's been too long." He glanced at her, biting his lip. "She's... I mean, it's not..."

Tosh reached over and patted his knee. "You don't have to tell me," she said.

Ianto briefly took his bandaged hand from the gearshift and laid it over hers. "I will, though," he said, quietly. "Someday."

Tosh couldn't think of anything to say to that. Instead, she turned to look out the window. Even at night, Cardiff was brightly lit -- the buildings were aglow, the streetlights shone down on them, and every car that whipped past them was a blur of light. The darkness was kept at a distance, held at bay.

Next to her, Ianto began to sing softly.

_"Dominique, nique, nique_

_S'en allait tout simplement_

_Routier pauvre et chantant..."_

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> "There's someone knocking in the wall," and "It's okay. You can go now," are both references to the song "House of Leaves," by Poe.


End file.
